Getting Started with User Acquisition for Apps: The Complete Guide

What’s happening with user acquisition? The app age has obviously matured since its infancy—just a decade ago—but it certainly has not stopped growing. The key performance indicators you care about as an app marketer continue to generate impressive upward trajectories.

Look back and you see double-digit year-over-year growth.

Look forward and the trend is projected to continue into 2020.

Non-organic installs—realized from paid and owned marketing activities—will also see the bars get taller each year and an arrow pointing steadily higher.

Average annual consumer spend will reach $26 per device by 2020 (up 23% from 2017).

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Will your apps be joining the party?

Obviously, the raging hot app market bodes well for those capable of staying in step with the demands of their verticals and mastering data-driven marketing. However, it should be equally obvious that in every crowd you have leaders, laggards and a vast array of competitors in between.

Just like in every type of business, in the case of mobile apps, marketers are responsible for attracting and keeping customers. In this guide, we’ll focus on the former, which is known as user acquisition, or UA.

User acquisition is the method of driving new users to a mobile app business through marketing activity.